Young Publishing Professionals Face Off in the CBC’s Annual Trivia Contest

The Children’s Book Council’s Early Career Committee held their most well-attended Trivia Night yet on Thursday, November 11, 2010, which was generously hosted by Scholastic. After food and drink were enjoyed by YPG members and young professionals from most of the major publishing houses, round one began. A challenging set of questions about all genres and from all eras of children’s literature, it elicited responses ranging from the impressively precise to the admirably creative. These were encouraged by the antics of the hosts, authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, who promised bonus points for “flirtatious” answers. The desperate teams made declarations like, “Holly Black is pretty and nice,” and posited that perhaps the final episode of Reading Rainbow had featured a dramatic recitation of War and Peace by Oprah Winfrey. Despite vigorous competition from more than ten teams—including valiant efforts by Holly and Cassandra’s editor, Karen Wojtyla, who, perhaps unsurprisingly, answered every question pertaining to her authors’ books correctly—only two teams clearly rose to the top to continue onto the next round.

These two now faced off Jeopardy-style. The most coveted category was, of course, WWHPD—What Would Harry Potter Do. For this, HarperCollins fielded a “rogue team” of two editorial assistants, who fiercely answered all Harry Potter-related questions in a matter of seconds despite not qualifying for the final round in the first place. The judges admired the rogue team’s boldness, but the prizes of golden bunnies were ultimately awarded to the first and second place teams’ members, along with veiled promises from Holly Black of induction into a secret society that reputedly controls all of children’s publishing from behind the scenes. While the author of this article can neither verify nor deny the existence of said society, she does applaud the CBC’s ECC for another great year of trivia.

—Annie Stone